The invention relates to animal feeding systems and, more particularly, relates to feeder assemblies for poultry and the like.
Automated feeding systems for poultry and like domestic animals have proved highly successful in modern animal husbandry operations. These systems can supply feed mixtures to a large poultry flock with minimum effort by the poultry grower. Both the amounts of feed delivered and the proportions of feed ingredients can be regulated, thus permitting the flock to be inexpensively raised from chicks to mature, commercially valuable birds in a relatively short time.
Among the important parts of such automated feeding systems are the feeder assemblies. These assemblies receive feed flow from a feed conveyor, and are located on or near the poultry house floor to afford the birds ready access to the feed. Among the patents disclosing such feeder assemblies are, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,388,690, 3,511,215, 3,811,412, 3,911,868, 4,070,990, 4,476,811, 4,834,026, 4,995,343, 5,092,274, 5,941,193 and 6,173,676.
Early poultry growers traditionally introduced very young birds into poultry houses and provided supplemental feed to the young birds or chicks on paper, cardboard or the like, which was laid on the poultry house floor. The chicks were not initially introduced to feeding from feeder assemblies for two main reasons. One reason was that chicks were unable to gain access to the feed in the feeder assemblies because the height of the feeder assemblies from where the birds would gain access to the feed was too high for the chicks. Another reason was that the feed which was introduced into the feeder assembly was always provided on the bottom of a pan of the feeder assembly such that even if the young birds could reach over the height of the side of the feeder assembly, the birds could not then reach down to eat the feed at the bottom of the feeder assembly. Thus, the poultry grower provided supplemental feed to the chicks either by providing the supplemental feed to the chicks outside of the feeder assemblies or by hand filling the supplemental feed into the feeder assemblies to provide a high feed level.
Problems, however, arose with such practice. Among these problems, obviously, was that such a practice required more time and labor by the poultry grower which could be better utilized elsewhere. Also, the feed provided on the floor of the poultry house came into contact with waste, dirt, etc., which the birds would also then eat, potentially causing health problems for the birds. Further, the birds raked the feed with their feet such that the feed became spread out over the poultry house floor, such that a fair amount of the feed placed on the floor by the poultry grower was wasted.
Thus, many prior art feeders were designed to help combat these problems. For instance, the feeder assemblies disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,311,839, 5,462,017 and 5,718,187 attempted to solve the problem of the height of the feeder assemblies being too high such that smaller birds could not gain access to or see the feed presented in the feeder assembly to eat it, thus requiring the poultry growers to either utilize the supplemental feed, as discussed above or provide separate feeder assemblies in which the smaller birds would be able to feed from. These feeder assemblies utilized a lost motion connection between the grill and the pan to provide both a shallow pan depth for younger, smaller birds and a deep pan depth for older, larger birds. The problem with the lost motion connection for the poultry grower is that in order to utilize the lost motion connection, the feeder assemblies had to be raised off of or lowered onto the poultry house floor. For instance, the feeder assemblies could not be lowered from the deep pan depth to the shallow pan depth without a bottom of the pan resting on the poultry house floor. As the floors of poultry houses are often uneven, the feeder assemblies could not all be consistently configured in the same manner when the feeder assemblies were positioned on the floor of the poultry house.
Other designs like the feeder assemblies disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,476,811 and 5,092,274 also attempted to solve the problem of the feed being presented to younger, smaller birds at too low of a level within the feeder assemblies. The feeder assemblies provided both an upper or “brood” feed gate to provide high feed levels for younger, smaller birds and a lower feed gate to provide lower feed levels for older, larger birds. The upper feed gate was provided as a window in the feed drop tube of the feeder assembly, which, when open, would allow feed to flow therethrough to create a high feed level in the feeder assembly for the young birds to easily see and eat. When the birds grew older and larger, the poultry grower could close the upper feed gate and allow the feed to flow through the bottom of the feed drop tube, i.e., the lower feed gate, to provide a lower feed level.
These feeder assemblies, while highly successful in industry, do, however, have some disadvantages to them. For example, in these inventions, the upper and lower feed gates are typically not both able to be open if the poultry grower should so desire them to be. Also, the feed gates are typically only opened and closed by moving the feeder assemblies on and off of the ground. Finally, these feeder assemblies did not provide for a smooth transition from a high feed level to a low feed level; as a practical matter the poultry grower could only provide a high feed level or a low feed level, but nothing in between.
Feeder assemblies of the prior art have also caused other problems for the poultry grower. For example, when birds grow larger, the birds typically like to eat from the feeder assemblies by resting a front side of their bodies on or against the feeder assembly in some manner. As feeder assemblies of the prior art have not typically been designed with the comfort and health of the birds in mind, the birds tend to eat from the feeder assemblies while being uncomfortable. In many prior art feeder assemblies, when birds rest on or against the feeder assemblies, detrimental physical effects, such as bruising, blistering, irritation, etc., to the front sides of the bird's bodies, such as their breasts, may occur. Such detrimental physical effects can cause two major problems. One is that since the front sides of the birds' bodies will become detrimentally physically effected, the birds will not be comfortable resting on or against the feeder assemblies, such that the birds may not eat as much food from the feeder assemblies as it is too uncomfortable for them to do so. Thus, the birds either do not become as large and are not as commercially valuable as they could have been, or the rate at which the birds grow is reduced, thus taking longer for them to reach their optimal size and weight. Secondly, once the birds are defeathered and graded, if the front sides of bird's bodies are detrimentally physically effected, the birds will receive a lower grade, thus making them less commercially valuable.
Therefore, an improved feeder assembly is needed which will overcome the problems and disadvantages of prior art feeder assemblies. The present invention provides such a feeder assembly. Features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent upon a reading of the attached specification, in combination with a study of the drawings.